R.L. Miller, a climate change activist from Southern California who was recently elected to the Democratic National Committee, says her home state’s former Gov. Jerry Brown once called her a “political terrorist.”
Upon being elected, Miller promptly told DNC Chairman Tom Perez to “f— off,” a reflection of her bitterness about the Democratic governing body rejecting her call for there to be a debate focused specifically on climate change during the primary.
Miller, the founder of the liberal mobilization group Climate Hawks Vote, won’t join the DNC until after the 2020 convention.
But her recent electoral success, she said, gives her leverage in her current role on the advisory board to the DNC’s climate council, where she will help push the party and its nominee, Joe Biden, to move left on climate change. (Miller voted for Elizabeth Warren.)
Miller, 57, spoke recently with the Washington Examiner about her goals for the DNC and her life in climate activism. Her answers have been condensed for clarity.
Washington Examiner: How did you get involved in climate activism and politics?
Miller: This is very much a second career for me. I was a lawyer and a mom. In the same way a lot of women were galvanized by President Trump to get into politics, my own particular outrage trigger was Sarah Palin.
I had been a hockey mom running bake sales, the mom of a hockey goalie, and here is this woman getting up at the RNC convention telling everyone she was qualified to be vice president because she’s a hockey mom. I was just going, “No way. I am not qualified, and neither are you.”
At the same time, I discovered the liberal blogosphere and began to speak out a little bit locally on climate change.
Then, I began to get really concerned by the number of climate deniers running for Congress.
I started a “climate zombies” project for Daily Kos where I identified every Republican who denied the science of climate change.
Then, we have the Democrats who will say climate is a priority issue but tend to see it as just another issue. Navigating the Democratic coalition is frustrating for climate activists.
Washington Examiner: Why did you decide to run for the DNC?
Miller: I felt generally that California is moving in the right direction, but the national party is moving in a different direction.
I worked on the outside with [DNC member] Christine Pelosi to pass a resolution to get the DNC to stop taking fossil fuel money. We got it done.
Tom Perez reversed course.
Then, the climate debate debacle came along. We did everything you can do to get the Democratic institution to listen to us. We delivered 225,000 signatures to the DNC. I drafted a template resolution asking the DNC members to vote for a climate debate. I felt I did everything right, but still, the vote came down 62% against.
I was so angry by a failure of democracy.
Washington Examiner: What do you want to see change at the DNC? What makes you think you can effect change as one of 447 DNC members?
Miller: We are not going to revisit the climate debate debacle.
What I want to do is make the DNC is more transparent and accessible to ordinary Democrats. There [are a] lot of common or garden-variety Democrats who don’t understand what the DNC does.
The other place I hope to make a difference is to change how climate people don’t vote. I am passionate about using our political system to solve climate change. We have the technology. We do not have the political will.
The way we fix that is getting those who care about climate change to vote.
Washington Examiner: Do you worry Biden, in his attempt to rally young liberal climate voters, will alienate independents in fossil fuel-producing swing states like Pennsylvania if he moves too far left?
Miller: I don’t think we are going to lose independent voters over things like fracking.
Democrats worry too much about the mythical Obama-Trump voters.
That may have been true in 2016, when both Trump and [Hillary] Clinton were widely despised among people not affiliated with either party.
By now, Trump is a known quantity. He has alienated broad swaths of America. He has turned soccer moms into anti-Trump activists.
Biden is going to run as not so well defined despite the fact he has a humongous record. He is running as a warm, fuzzy alternative, like Mr. Rogers with a cardigan sweater, and has a good chance of defeating Trump.
Washington Examiner: Biden already has the most progressive climate policy agenda proposed by a presidential nominee. What more do you think young people want from him?
Miller: I am not a millennial and never quite figured out their attraction to Bernie.
Maybe he needs to simply come across as a little more bold and willing to take risks or a little more willing to acknowledge this is the biggest threat the next generation faces and show some empathy for what they are going through.
Biden needs to do more to appeal to them.
Washington Examiner: What are the odds Biden and the DNC ignore climate change in favor of economic issues, as is typical amid a recession?
Miller: One of the reasons I am a little optimistic this pandemic will not lead to a swing away from environmentalism like in previous recessions is there is more respect for science. People are listening to data. If we don’t respect science, people die.
What the Green New Deal has shown is climate action can be very job friendly if done right.
We want to rebuild better, smarter, and faster.
Washington Examiner: You speak often of your experience surviving the Woolsey Fire that came near your home, one of several wildfires that raged across California in 2018. How will that experience inform how you approach your role with the DNC?
Miller: Climate is not some far-off, abstract issue in the future.
Climate change is scaring the guts out of me every October when the hot winds blow.
As a wildfire survivor, I intend to bring that voice to the DNC. Anyone who tells me other things take precedent, I will say as a matter of experience that this a matter of life and death.
Washington Examiner: You’ve been critical of Tom Perez and other establishment Democrats. How can you be effective on the inside with a bomb-throwing approach?
Miller: I know that I have a complicated relationship with people who think I am not activist enough because I was not a Bernie supporter and these people who think I am far too much of a bomb thrower.
After that quote came out about Tom Perez, people said, “That’s a very productive way of starting off.”
I just smiled. Jerry Brown called me a political terrorist. He is gone, and I am still here.
If you respect science and are willing to speak the truth, people are willing to respect that — even if it’s seen as divisive at the time.
Washington Examiner: Your theory of change is based on voting Republicans out of office instead of pursuing bipartisanship. Republicans are starting to pivot on climate change. Why upset that progress?
Miller: I will find allies where I can. I have not been dismissive of the Trillion Trees Initiative [a Republican-led effort to plant trees to absorb carbon]. I know a lot of the Left have been reflexively against it.
One place where people are not divided at all is the need for battery storage. That is a positive place where there is room for bridge-building.
But what is frustrating to me is there is a very clear political divide in the technologies that are embraced, and Republicans seem to really hate solar and wind, and they prefer nuclear. There is a political divide. I don’t know how to bridge it.
To try to reduce emissions without reducing fossil fuels, as Republicans propose, is incredibly, breathtakingly naive or wrong.
I see investment in these carbon capture projects [for fossil fuel plants] as very much speculative investments in a pill that will make us thinner when the truth of the matter is we all still need to start dieting now, and it is very much delusional that this carbon capture will solve all of our problems.
